Milton Dick (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

His colleagues are laughing. I must have struck a nerve there, just a tad. But my money's always on the quiet ones, the member for Fairfax and the member for Boothby. I know who's circling around the minister, Angus Taylor, who's next in line; it's not the member for Goldstein.

In closing the argument today, it's been really interesting. We've heard a lot of bluster, insults and personal attacks. We've heard a lot, of course, about, 'Labor started the scheme eight or nine years ago so it's all Labor's fault, even though we've been in government six years.' But what we haven't heard at all from one member of the government is: 'We got it wrong, and we apologise to the hundreds of thousands of people.' The member for Goldstein said, 'Well, they would just come to my office, and we would talk to someone and it would all get fixed.' That didn't happen. What alternative universe do they live in? I will tell you what did happen: when people did go public and went to the media, magically, it was solved. I know that when you write to this minister you don't get a response. I've got letters to the minister, Stuart Robert, where he has not responded once—not once—on behalf of constituents. Do they think that's acceptable—that a member of parliament can write to a minister and not get an acknowledgment?

Honourable members interjecting—

He's agreeing with me, so I'll give him 10 out of 10. I bet if he was the minister, Minister Goldstein would write back to me.

Honourable members interjecting—

He'd do anything to become a minister; we know that. In the other audition that we heard today—from the member for Wentworth, who was complaining that he wasn't made a minister after the election—the defence that we heard time and time again was not about real people and was not about individual cases. They weren't talking about people. There were certainly no apologies.

We know that it was through the leadership of the member for Maribyrnong talking about this issue, coming to forums, sitting down with people and working hard to get the government to take a position on this—on the toxic robodebt which they were in charge of and which they oversaw. Time and time again they said, 'There's nothing to see here; we know best.' All those snobs opposite—through you, Mr Deputy Speaker Hogan—who were looking down on people on welfare continue in today's debate to lecture us about the lifters and the leaners and all those people.

We on this side have a completely different approach. When people don't deserve treatment from a government, we speak out. We say it is not good enough. We saw that time and time again—the families, the pensioners, the grandmothers and the grandfathers who worked their entire lives paid their taxes and did the right thing, only for this greedy and selfish government to use some sort of shady and back-alley type of behaviour to scare people into paying money. The onus of proof was on the person with the debt. I sat with people who allegedly owed thousands of dollars. Do you know what? We did ring the department and we did make representations, and we were told that they still owed the money. They didn't owe a dollar. Not one member of the government can get up and apologise to those people. I know—through you, Mr Deputy Speaker—that you all had those people in your own electorates. They were are all coming into your offices. I bet you secretly sat with them and said: 'Oh, I'm not really sure why this happened. I've got to look into it for you. Oh, gee, the minister needs to lift their game.' Not one of you spoke out on behalf of them—not once. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. Thousands of ordinary, hardworking Australians were punished, and then a court of law found that you acted illegally. Not one of them had the decency to get up in today's debate and apologise for what they put tens of thousands of people through. I say: shame on members of the government. When I was growing up I was taught by my parents that when you made a mistake you owned up to it and apologised for it. We know that doesn't happen with the Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction. We know that he can't even bear to look anyone in the face and say, 'I stuffed up.' It's always someone else's fault to this government. I'm glad the court case has happened. I'm glad the Labor Party has stood up to the government. We will continue to do it every single day of this term.

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